The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c12.13

c12.13

Whoever, in fact, has by his studies acquired a certain familiarity with Central Asian matters, whether he be Indianist or Sinologue, cannot have remained ignorant of the preponderant role played by Indian civilization in « Serindia », at least down to the coming of the Musalmans; and it is a fact no less surely established that the principal vehicle of this influence was the religion of Buddha. It is in this direction that it would be proper, *a priori*, to point our researches : towards the same quarter we are in the case of this particular picture directed by the character of the edifice beneath whose ruins it was discovered. Now, if we look at it no longer with eyes hereditarily Christian, but through Buddhist spectacles, we shall no less infallibly recognize in it, instead of the Virgin Mary nursing the Child Jesus, the fairy Hâritî suckling her last born, Pingala, whilst some of her numerous sons are playing around her. This is a consecrated iconographic theme, of which it will be easy for us to quote numerous examples, spread over nearly twenty centuries and over the whole of the Far East. In face of the scarcity of western counterparts, this abundance of documents would at once weigh down the balance in favour of the Buddhist identification : comparison of the various replicas will bring full confirmation.